Leave the Driving to Us, Please

Houston's public bus service used to be so unreliable that a local newspaper featured front-page box scores listing the number of buses on the road, the number in the shop and the percentage of late arrivals (as high as 50%). Virtually every day some routes got no buses at all. To untangle the mess, Houston voters in 1978 approved a special 1% tax on retail sales to help pay for a modern transit system. Since then the city has spent $790 million to upgrade service, adding 789 new buses, 20 park-and-ride lots, 750 sheltered bus stops and five new maintenance shops. Houston now boasts a highly efficient transit system that the American Public Transit Association ranks as the safest in the U.S. The buses are on schedule 98% of the time and are so dependable that they need repair only once every 11,000 miles, compared with the U.S. average of 4,000 miles. The city plans to expand its system of express lanes for buses, vans and car pools. Houston will have 70 miles of such lanes, more than any other U.S. city, when they are completed, in 1991.